Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Lucky Strike

In
a remarkable conjunction, the finest of left-leaning SciFi writers and
liveliest of new radical presses has produced a small gem. The Lucky Strike,
launching the Press’ “Outspoken Authors” series, manages to get one of
the most articulate of the outspoken, tapping a favorite genre (that
is to say mine, since childhood) to explore what a writer can do
without holding political office or throwing tons of money at some good
cause.

Robinson, for those who don’t immediately recognize his name, is the author of Red Mars
and others in the “Mars” series, and some dozens of others probing the
possible futures of humankinds and the planetary eco systems that they
reach. Since the 1980s, he has been seen as a successor to
genius-autodidact Philip K. Dick, on whom Robinson wrote a Ph.D. thesis
before leaving academics behind for a literary career. Red Mars
and the other Martian works hit the Science Fiction genre readers like
a ton of Martian ore: they were scientifically, most of all
geologically astute, keenly written with the expectation that one day
humankind could “terraform,” creating new artificial environments on
distant planets. And they would need to do so, after creating so much
eco-havoc on home Earth. The question that Robinson pressed was obvious
yet crucial: would we screw up again or find some other way to live?

His answers were not obvious because Robinson is no obvious thinker.
The history of “scientific” socialism pointed one way, and Robinson
knew it well: the environment properly guided toward sustainable use.
The other radical projection was to leave a mostly barren planet as it
was found — barren. That is to say, disrupting it as little as
possible. Both of these found a common enemy: the corporate style of
entering some new eco-system and ripping off as much resources as
possible, with no regard to the consequences. It was a brilliant
suggestion, altogether, and by the last volume of the series, a future
humankind is out at the limits of our solar system, pondering the same
questions. Robinson’s other novels have a way of asking similarly
crucial questions from different angles. They can be delightfully
oddball as well as deadly serious, and they are fun to read even when
difficult. No wonder he has won so many prizes in the field.

Here we find a great little novella, contrary to history, about the US
air force pilot who refused to drop the A-Bomb on Japan, was
court-martialed, and sentenced to death. Robinson spins out assorted
suggestions about what might have happened if, for instance, Thomas
Dewey had actually been elected in 1948 rather than Cold War zealot
Harry Truman, if the Democrats (rather than Republicans) had
discredited themselves so thoroughly in the 1970s to bring on defeat,
and so on, pondering serious questions along the way for readers to ask
themselves.

The rest of this little book is an
interview, one of many that Robinson has done in the last thirty years
but more thorough, and deeply sensitive, for which we must thank the
interviewer, fellow SciFi writer Terry Bisson, as well as Robinson
himself. It’s great to know that Huckelberry Finn was his
first favorite novel, because Robinson has been heading for the
“territory” himself ever since; but more important to know that as a
native Californian, removed but back again, he is deeply at home,
enjoying the novels he wrote decades ago, including Gold Coast.
He is a dedicated as well as immensely talented fellow, and as we
leave this little volume, we expect to see his brilliance on display
repeatedly. Perhaps, with this volume, we grasp the meaning of that
brilliance a little better.